I was in Taps on Saturday afternoon sat at the bar with Gareth talking to Irena, while Adam and Graeme were sat behind the hatch watching the Celtic match on the big TV in the middle. Well I saw Graeme and Adam, but Graeme was watching the Celtic match and Adam was trying not to fall asleep.
Now, I can’t remember exactly what it was that prompted her to remark on it (some random pub banter[1] of some sort no doubt), but Irena noted that the Taps was something of a family.
Now, as you know I’ve been banging the drum for the Taps as community idea for some time now, but the Taps as family? It’s an intriguing thought, although even the most cursory of reflections tells you that it’s not.
Or that if it is, it’s bloody dysfunctional one. A really, really dysfunctional one. One in which the children should have been taken into care years ago and the parents locked up for all manner of negligence and abuse.
But what the Taps is, is a community. A small little social village (I don’t know why, but I always imagine that the Taps is a 17th Century pilgrim community in North America, struggling against the elements and the odds to survive through a long bleak winter – but hey, that’s just me) functioning according to its own set of social norms.
It’s a community of people who inhabit the same space, and who, for the most part, and to greater and lesser extents get along and on occasion even like one another. But it isn’t something that you can depend on (or at least I wouldn’t advise it).
[1] I really hate that word. Banter. It’s horrible. Even before this whole Andy Gray and Richard Keys thing kicked off it was a horrible word. Banter is just a substitute for ‘having an unfunny conversation’. People don’t banter. They talk, they discuss, they have a chat or a laugh. They assuredly don’t banter.
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